Organizing: Event or Lifestyle?

Right now, I am student teaching. My life has been going to school, teaching lessons, go to methods courses, write lesson plans and repeat.

While I am writing lesson plans now as practice and to prove my competence for my teaching credential (the event), I will always write lesson plans in some form. Writing these plans, even if they aren’t as detailed and formatted the way my university likes then to be, will keep me prepared an organized. Writing lesson plans will.be a part of my lifestyle for the rest of my career.

The same idea applies to our genealogy research as well. You can either look at organizing your genealogy stuff as an event – something you only do once – or you can view it as a lifestyle. If you try to view organizing as an event, your stuff will look pretty and seem functional for a short amount of time before the old habits come back and things get out of hand again.

Or you can view organizing your genealogy stuff as a lifestyle. Sure, no one likes filing but you gotta do it. No one likes renaming downloaded files and putting them in the right place. No one likes taking meticulous notes or recording where you have searched. But if you don’t do it, you will waste time looking for stuff you have already done.

I came across your “old” blog first with the Organizing Paper posts. I downloaded your e-book as well and was wondering if you’ve experimented with paperless genealogy in any way? Or is that a project for the future? Thanks!
Gigi